Children of the Street Read online

  “Excellent,” Botswe said, sitting forward.

  Dawson handed him the autopsy photos.

  “My goodness,” Botswe said. “This is extreme decomposition.”

  Dawson detected just the tiniest trill in the doctor’s voice.

  “Hello, what’s this?” He looked up at Dawson. “Fingers amputated?”

  “Yes, except the index.”

  “Associated with the murder? Or do we know that?”

  “Dr. Biney, the pathologist, thinks so.”

  Botswe leaned back, one hand contemplatively on his chin. “Hmm. Any other mutilation? No removal of the genitalia, or the tongue?”

  “No.”

  Botswe rose. “Come with me, Inspector. Let’s go to my study. Please, by all means bring your Malta with you.”

  They passed the dining room into a carpeted corridor. The professor’s study had a muted, anechoic quality to it, like a library. In a way, it was, what with the wall-to-wall-to-wall bookcase. A king-size mahogany desk was polished to a hard, reflecting shine. Botswe’s framed degrees and awards—Dawson counted ten of them—told a tale of academic brilliance. The University of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Oxford, Yale, and several prestigious societies. On another wall hung three framed pictures of Botswe with a woman and three teenage children.

  A large window looked out onto the garden at an angle slightly different from that of the sitting room. Obi was spreading a tarp over the garden furniture to protect it from the looming rainstorm. Judging by the sky, it would arrive sooner than Dawson had been expecting.

  From the bookshelf, the professor selected a hefty textbook titled Magic, Murder and Madness: Ritual Killing in West Africa, by Allen Botswe, Ph.D. He brought it back to the desk and pulled up a chair for Dawson.

  “This is probably the most focused on ritual murder that I have.” Botswe opened the book to a page about one-third through. “We can go back as far as the eighteen seventies, when British colonials gave accounts of human sacrifices made to the gods by the Ashantis. Here’s a rare depiction by an unknown artist of a sacrificial ceremony.”

  Botswe gave Dawson a few moments to examine the picture before going to another page. “In more modern times, one of the most well-documented early cases was the Bridge House Murders of March 1945. The body of a ten-year-old girl was found on the beach a short distance from Elmina at a popular bathing spot. Her lips, cheeks, eyes, and privates had been removed. The poor little girl died from hemorrhage. The story goes that these body parts were to be used to make medicine, so called, to help someone win a chieftaincy dispute.”

  “A human life just for a chieftaincy dispute,” Dawson said.

  “People go to extraordinary lengths,” Botswe said. “Five men were charged, found guilty of first-degree murder, and hanged. In the twenty-first century, we still have examples of ritual murder. Although Nigeria has probably received most notoriety on the subject, Ghana has had its share.”

  “What makes a killing a ritual one?”

  “It shows some aspect of strong belief systems that have no scientific basis. It may be for the purposes of creating a magic potion, as in the Bridge House Murder, or to appease the gods, or in some cases, there’s the belief that a particular ritual will bring wealth.”

  “Are there parts of the body that are focused on more than others?”

  “Yes, some are invested with greater magical powers than others. If you read accounts of these killings, it’s clear that heads, breasts, lips, eyes, and genitalia are more valued than limbs or limb parts.”

  “So what’s your feeling about the Musa Zakari case?”

  “We can’t completely rule out that the fingers had some ritualistic significance to the killer,” Botswe said, “but in the absence of some other body part removed in addition, I’m not that persuaded it’s a ritual murder in the usual defined sense.”

  “If that’s the case, can you suggest what else it could mean?”

  “Nothing specific comes to mind except that either the fingers have special meaning to the killer or he’s trying to say something with the murder. For instance, we point with the index finger. When we want to indicate ‘number one,’ we hold up the index finger … Oh, wait a minute.”

  He and Dawson stared at each other.

  “Could he be saying this is only number one in a series?” Botswe said.

  “If that were the case, wouldn’t he cut the index first, then the middle finger, and so on until they’re all removed, not the reverse? That would be like counting backward.”

  Botswe was stroking his beard. “Or,” he said slowly, “another alternative—and this is just a wild notion—is that he’s making reference to the opposite phenomenon, as in a reincarnation, or rebirth. Among some African peoples, death is an end to one life only and a gateway to another. In other words, man must be reborn because reincarnation is a spiritual necessity. So let’s say this man kills repeatedly, each subsequent death is represented by the appearance of one more finger until all five are back.”

  “It never even occurred to me,” Dawson said with some admiration. “I suppose that’s why I’m the ignoramus and you’re the expert I came to consult.”

  Botswe smiled. “My fancy theory may hold no water whatsoever. I hope it doesn’t.”

  They spent a little more time with each other. As they walked outside together, Dawson was praying the Honda wouldn’t embarrass him by not starting. Which was exactly what it did. Botswe and Obi watched him as he tried multiple times to coax some life out of the bike.

  “Obi can put it in the back of his pickup and take you home,” Botswe suggested, glancing up at the sky. The sun had disappeared. “Looking at those rain clouds, I don’t think you want to be out riding in any case. There may be lightning.”

  “I can take you,” Obi said to Dawson. “No problem.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  Obi went out to the street, returning in a well-used black Toyota pickup that looked out of place in Dr. Botswe’s lavish environment. Dawson and Obi loaded the bike, tethering it upright and steady on the truck bed.

  “Thank you for your help, Dr. Botswe,” Dawson said, shaking hands again. “I’ll be in touch.”

  Once Obi and Inspector Dawson had departed, Dr. Botswe sat on the terrace overlooking the garden. Smart man, that detective, the kind you watched what you said when he was around. Botswe had sensed the gears and cogwheels working in the inspector’s mind.

  After a while, he went back inside to the study. At his desk, he thought for a moment about life when Peggy had been alive. She was gone forever, leaving an unhealed gash straight through Botswe’s heart. His children and grandchildren were his treasures, but he didn’t see them often enough. His only constant companions were his work and his wealth. He applied himself assiduously to both to distract him from the pain and emptiness.

  He logged on to his computer and worked for about thirty minutes on his latest paper: “Fight for Survival: Street Children and Crime.” His mind strayed. He saved his latest edit and brought up the photos he had been looking at before the inspector arrived. Gruesome. Mutilations of all kinds from war atrocities, crime scenes, vehicle crashes, and autopsies. His work had brought him to this awful attraction. What would Peggy have said about his obsession?

  He logged off quickly and stood up. He knew there was something wrong with him. He was, after all, a psychologist. Then again, those in his profession were often the most psychologically flawed.

  As Obi drove past the Tetteh Quarshie Interchange, he said to Dawson, “The doctor is a lovely man.”

  “I understand you’ve worked for him about twelve years.”

  “Yes, please. When I first came, I was poor. I didn’t know anything at all, at all. But I struggled to learn. Windows, doors, electricity, water—I can fix anything. That fountain in the doctor’s garden, I made it myself.”

  “I think you need to come to my house then,” Dawson said with a laugh.

 
Obi chuckled. “Please, you just tell me, I will come.”

  “Thank you. I’ll remember that.”

  “But how the doctor treats me,” Obi continued, becoming serious again, “it’s like I’m his family. He is the one who bought me this truck three years ago, and even before that, he helped me get furniture and a new gas stove for my house.”

  “He has a good heart, obviously.”

  “Oh, yes. Every day I thank the Almighty for guiding me to the doctor.”

  “The pictures of the woman and three kids in his office—that’s his family?”

  “Yes, please. But four years ago, the wife died. He has been sad ever since that day. He loved her very much.”

  “What happened—to the wife, I mean?”

  “Accident. A terrible one like you’ve never seen. She was driving to Cape Coast.”

  “And the children?”

  “They are all in different places abroad, but the oldest one says she will come back to Ghana soon. I know the doctor wants her to stay in his house.”

  “He’s lonesome.”

  “Oh, yes—very lonesome. When his children come to see him, and the oldest one brings the grandchildren too, he is so happy.” Obi laughed, as though his boss’s joy was being channeled through him.

  The expected rain began in earnest. Dawson asked Obi to drive his motorbike to a repair shop in Asylum Down. Once his bike had been dropped off, Dawson insisted on taking a taxi despite Obi’s repeated offers to give him a ride home.

  “You’ve done more than enough, my friend. Thank you.”

  He gave Obi a generous tip for his trouble.

  19

  Comfort Mahama was sixteen. She was copper-colored, a coveted hue, with a tiny waist that flared to those big, bouncy, round buttocks that drove men crazy. Starting late Monday afternoon, she loitered around the Timber Market waiting for customers.

  Most of the time, she was a head porter at Agbogbloshie Market up the street, carrying neck-breaking loads of merchandise for people. It just didn’t pay enough. In her mind, Comfort was doing what she needed to do to survive. There was no right or wrong about being an ashawo, no good or bad.

  She glanced at the gathering storm clouds. Rain ruined business. Her gaze shifted, roaming languidly across the crowded market scene—people haggling over plywood or paint, a woman selecting herbal preparations from the fetish section, porters lumbering through with planks of wood on carts. One of them, a ragged boy of about seventeen, came up to her after delivering his consignment and offered her fifty pesewas.

  She shook her head. He must be joking.

  He called her a nasty name and moved on. Comfort flicked her head with contempt and stuck her tongue out at his back.

  A few meters away, down a row of timber, a fight had broken out between two porter boys over who was to get the job transporting a pile of plywood. No one seemed to want to stop the brawl. Quite the contrary, a small crowd was collecting to watch. One of the boys was much bigger than the other, who was getting thrashed. After a few minutes of being thoroughly beaten, he begged for mercy, picked himself up, and limped off swollen and battered.

  Comfort looked away. These fights were entertainment only because there was nothing better to watch. She shifted her weight slightly, aware of a burning sensation in her loins. She was using some medicine from the fetish market, but it didn’t seem to be working. She still had a yellowish discharge.

  Someone hissed at her and beckoned. She sauntered over. He was about nineteen, she guessed, not bad looking.

  “I like you,” he said, smiling and showing a gap in his teeth that suited him.

  “Four cedis.”

  “Oh, it’s too much!”

  “How much you want to pay?”

  “One fifty.”

  They haggled until they agreed on two fifty and then took a walk. The commercial area of the market thinned out. Standing outside a tent rigged up to a wall was a gaunt man. Flash, as people called him, might have been in his twenties, but he looked like forty. He was wearing orange trousers and a bright blue shirt open almost to his navel. Comfort wondered where he got his ridiculous clothes. No one dressed like that.

  This turf belonged to a guy called Tedamm. Everyone knew Tedamm. Flash collected user fees from the ashawos and paid Tedamm the larger portion.

  Comfort handed him seventy-five pesewas. He looked at it as if it wasn’t money.

  “You short fifteen pesewas,” he said.

  “Ho!” she exclaimed. “But you charged seventy-five last time.”

  “Price go up.”

  Sullenly, she topped off the fee.

  “Wait small,” Flash told her.

  She ignored him while he stared at her without blinking the whole time they stood there. She hated the man. They waited for the muffled groans from inside the tent to die down. The girl came out first, her face dispassionate, then the man, zipping himself up.

  Flash nodded permission to Comfort, and his eyes followed her as she went in with her customer.

  Afterward, Comfort reflected she would have to do better than this. Two fifty minus the tent user fee didn’t leave her with much. The first drops of rain began, which promised even more misery. She started out to Nkrumah Circle to pick up some more customers. It was a long walk, but she could charge more there than at the Timber Market.

  By the time darkness fell, the downpour was in full force. She took partial shelter under the roof of a vendor’s kiosk. After a while, a van sidled up to her. She looked in through the passenger window. The man inside nodded at her. She got in, they pulled off. Soaked, she was grateful to be out of the rain.

  “How much?” he asked her.

  “Fifteen.”

  “Ten.”

  “Twelve.”

  The man nodded. “Okay.”

  As he drove through the industrial area, he gave her a towel to wipe her face and neck. He turned in to a deserted alley behind a school near Awudome Circle.

  “Get in the back,” he told her.

  He joined her, lying down with her on a cloth he had spread on the floor. The rain drummed on the roof. There was a little light through the front window from a lamp on the side of a building. As he hovered over her and pushed her legs back, she saw he had a curious scar. It ran from the front of his scalp down into his forehead. His eyes were unfocused and cold. She shuddered.

  “Where are you from?” he asked.

  “Juaso. Volta Region.”

  He was putting on a condom, which surprised her.

  “Why did you come to Accra?”

  “To make money.”

  “Your father used to beat you in Juaso?”

  Second surprise. How did he know?

  “Yes,” she whispered. She adjusted her position for his access.

  “He beat you very badly.”

  “Yes,” she whimpered.

  “Because you’re a bad girl?”

  She didn’t understand what he was talking about.

  “Say it. ‘I’m a bad girl.’ ”

  “I’m a bad girl.”

  As his pace increased, he told her to repeat it over and over again. He grabbed her wrist with a grip of steel, pulling her hand up to his forehead, where his scar was.

  “Touch it,” he gasped. “Touch it.”

  The scar felt firm, yet gelatinous and mobile, like worms in a bag. Comfort snatched her hand away as the man let out a hoarse groan of climax.

  “Where do you sleep?” he asked her as they drove away.

  “At the railway station.”

  “I’ll take you there,” he said. “I don’t want you to sell your body to anyone else.”

  It was the strangest thing any man had ever said to her.

  When he dropped her off, he said, “I’ll come back for you.”

  She wasn’t sure what he meant.

  Seven o’clock Monday night, Ebenezer trudged the final wet mile to the railway station area off Kwame Nkrumah Avenue. Like everyone else who lived on the streets, he hat
ed the rain and the mess it caused. His shoeshine box was slung over his right shoulder. The brushes and tins of shoe polish made a comforting clattering noise against one another. Over a year ago, when he was fourteen and he had finally saved enough money as a refuse carrier, he bought a shoeshine box and supplies. Two weeks later, another street boy stole it all while Ebenezer was asleep. It was so painful and infuriating that he had wept. Not in front of the other kids. He did it when he visited the pit latrine, crying as he crouched in position.

  That experience had toughened him. Wiry, Ebenezer didn’t take abuse from anyone. Another thief had once tried to snatch his second shoeshine box, the one he had now. Ebenezer beat him with such heavy blows that he begged for his life.

  Now, things were looking up. Ebenezer was the leader on his shoeshine corner in Lartebiokorshie. He was in charge of three other guys. To use his supplies, they paid him a percentage of their earnings.

  His feet ached. Dusty during the day, they were now caked in red mud. Walking was a matter of putting one foot in front of the other while pretending the pain wasn’t there. Not even a week of toil on the farm in Jakwa, his home village in the Western Region, would have made his feet hurt so much. Accra’s streets were hard and unyielding.

  By the time he got to the railway, the rain had stopped. He crossed Kwame Nkrumah Avenue to Station Road. There was barely a streetlight, except for the odd fluorescent lighting outside a storefront or warehouse. Darkness shrouded the crumbling old UTC building, which had been one of Accra’s best department stores long before Ebenezer was even born. People were still milling around the streets or talking, eating or playing cards, but later, as people slept on the pavements in front of the stores, everything would become as quiet as it was dark.

  Rounding the corner to Knutsford Avenue, Ebenezer collided with someone, making him take half a step back. He stiffened, ready to do battle as he saw who it was. Tedamm was eighteen. He had been around for a long time. He was taller than everyone else. Angular and muscular, he looked as if he had been carved from rock. His eyes took on a hard glint as he saw Ebenezer.